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ABSTRACT
We have conducted a study of meetings to gain an understanding
of how conversation is affected by computer use.
We videotaped five workplace meetings, noting the disruptions
that occurred, and recording people’s disengagements
when they performed tasks with paper or with laptops. We
saw evidence that people preferred these disengagements
not to exceed 10 seconds. When tasks were performed on
laptops, disengagements were more likely to exceed this
limit. We suggest that this could be contributing to disruptions,
and that laptop software may need to adapted so that
users can keep their disengagements from exceeding 10
seconds’ duration.

William Newman
Consultant, Microsoft Research
7 JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge UK
wmn@pobox.com